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A Few Famous Dyslexics

Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Though Rauschenberg had difficulty reading he liked to put words into his artwork. He often misspelled them. He also liked to play word games, for example, creating palindromes (words that can be read forward and backward.) On May 9, 2006 at Christie’s in New York City, a work of art by Robert Rauschenberg titled Cage, dedicated to John Cage, sold for $1,360,000, a record for a Rauschenberg piece on paper. Though his work is recognized worldwide, when he was in school his success would not have been predicted. Rauschenberg had dyslexia, a reading disability that made school very difficult for him. “I was considered slow. While my classmates were reading their textbooks, I drew in the margins,” Rauschenberg told an interviewer.

Albert Einstein
(March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) Being one of the most important great minds of his century Albert Einstein was then known to suffer from dyslexia mainly because of his bad memory and his constant failure to memorize the simplest of things. He would not remember the months in the year yet he would succeed in solving some of the most complicated mathematical formulas of the time without any trouble. He may have never learned how to properly tie his shoelaces but his scientific contributions and theories still have a major effect on all of today’s current knowledge of science.

Pablo Picasso Pablo
(25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) Picasso was a famous, controversial, and trend-setting art icon. Pablo attended local parochial schools and had a very difficult time. He is described as having difficulty reading the orientation of the letters and labeled a dyslexic, and despite the initial difficulties was able to catch up with the curriculum. However, dyslexia made school difficult and he never really benefited from his education. Dyslexia would trouble Picasso for the rest of his life.

Pablo’s father was an art teacher in Malaga, and encouraged Pablo to attend. Pablo enrolled in the school in 1892. Despite the difficulties that his learning disabilities posed, it became clear that Pablo had an incredible talent. From an early age Pablo Picasso had developed the sense of how people wanted to be seen and how others saw them. Over the course of his career he developed a unique sense of beauty and style that seemed to call to people. Pablo painted things as he saw them — out of order, backwards or upside down. His paintings demonstrated the power of imagination, raw emotion, and creativity on the human psyche. As others before him, Pablo Picasso took art to a new level. A prolific painter, some of his famous works includes The Young Ladies of Avigon, Old Man with Guitar, and Guernica.

Willard Wigan
Born in 1957 in Birmingham, Willard Wigan MBE began his artistic life at a tender age. Suffering from dyslexia and learning difficulties, he struggled at school, finding solace in creating art of such minute proportions that it virtually could not be seen with the naked eye.

“It began when I was five years old,” says Willard. “I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticize me. That’s how my career as a micro-sculptor began.”